The Blue Mountains of Jamaica are frequently covered in a dense blanket of cloud, but when it lifts the first thing you notice is the cloak of forest extending up their steep slopes to the top of the highest peaks. As you walk up through these trees you encounter an incredible diversity of habitats from the high canopies of the lower slopes to the elfin forests of the ridge tops (barely taller than head height).
Yet new evidence shows that two effects of global climate change are combining to threaten these mountain forests. Climate change increases the intensity of the strongest hurricanes in the region, and it’s also slowly shifting the range of plant and animal species into previously colder zones, towards the north and south poles and up the slopes of mountains to higher altitudes.
